Organisation defines how experiences are related to each other. The organisation of information and experiences makes the human thinking process more efficient. Adaptation is the tendency to adjust to the environment. It is the process by which humans match the original experience and the new experience and this may not fit together.
According to Piaget there are two processes at work in cognitive development: assimilation and accommodation. Cognitive growth is the result of the constant interweaving of assimilation and accommodation. Assimilation occurs when we modify or change new information to fit into our schemas what we already know.
It keeps the new information or experience and adds to what already exists in our minds. Accomodation is when we restructure of modify what we already know so that new information can fit in better. This results from problems posed by the environment and when our perceptions do not fit in with what we know or think. As a biologist, Piaget was interested in how an organism adapts to its environment Piaget described as intelligence.
Assimilation is an adaptation process by which new information is taken into the previously existing schema. This is how humans perceive and adapt to new ideas. Here, the learner fits the new idea into what he already knows. For example, a small child may have a schema about a type of animals. One day this child sees another dog.
He identifies the new animal as a dog based on his previous knowledge of his dog. Assimilation occurs when someone makes use of the pre-existing knowledge to make sense of the new knowledge. Therefore, we can say that assimilation tends to be subjective. Accommodation is the process by which pre-existing knowledge is altered in order to fit in the new information. A new schema might be created in this process. This happens when the existing knowledge is not accurate.
Simply put, they have many more and well-developed schemas. But, if they try to learn something for which they have no pre-existing scheme, research suggests that he older you are the harder it is. So for example learning a foreign language for the first time or beginning piano lessons as an adult is a much harder task, than when you are young.
These major revisions of schema are known as accommodation. Accommodation was defined by Piaget as an acquisition of knowledge or learning which challenged an existing schema to the extent that the old schema could no longer exist in its previously existing form.
So if the schema of animal was dependent on the understanding of mammals then fish, birds, amphibians and reptiles would all challenge it. The redefined schema of animal would therefore rest on the idea that all animals have an internal skeleton.
That schema would hold until one realised that crabs, insects, jellyfish and also worms were animals. Each time there was a major challenge to an existing schema, a revolution in the concept has to happen and this is defined accommodation. As can be imagined, this is more difficult the older we get and also for certain types of ideas, particularly those ideas related to convictions such as faith, politics and people. He did a study of a cults where the people in them thought the end of the world was nigh because a great flood was coming.
Those with stronger beliefs however, refused to let go of their existing schema and assimilated the idea that the flood had not happened because they had been sufficiently pious.
Mussen ed. Festinger, L.
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